Japan Cannot NUKE CHINA liao - must return US 310kg Plutonium

[Sammyboy RSS Feed]

An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

If Japan secretly keeps a few kg of arms grade plutonium….

Kyodo News International January 26, 2014 9:18pm
U.S. asks Japan to return plutonium exported during Cold War

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/n...during-cold-wa

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/201.../#.UucaoP1m5FQ


Washington has been pressing Tokyo to return over 300 kilograms of mostly weapons-grade plutonium given to Japan for research purposes during the Cold War era, Japanese and U.S. government sources said Sunday.

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, which is keen on ensuring nuclear security, wants Japan to return the plutonium supplied for use as nuclear fuel at a fast critical assembly in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture, the sources told Kyodo News.

The highly concentrated plutonium could be used to produce 40 to 50 nuclear weapons.

Japan has strongly resisted returning the plutonium, which it says is needed for researching fast reactors. But it has finally given in to repeated U.S. demands, the sources said.

Since last year, Japan and the United States have been seriously discussing the matter, with Washington planning to forge an accord with Tokyo on the occasion of the third nuclear security summit in March in the Netherlands.

To prevent nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists, the U.S. government has called for eliminating and minimizing the use of such materials.

Since the first such summit was held in 2010 in Washington at the initiative of Obama, the United States has been pressing Japan to return 331 kg of plutonium now kept at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency's fast critical assembly, the sources said.

The facility, which attained criticality in 1967, is Japan's only critical assembly designed to study characteristics of fast reactors.

Since some of the plutonium was manufactured in Britain, the United States is also asking the permission of Britain to transfer all of it to the United States, the sources said, adding the three nations are working out their policies on the matter, the sources said.

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and other researchers have argued that the plutonium in question is needed for research and vital for producing good data.

At present, Japan has another estimated 44 tons of plutonium, but its quality is not on par with the plutonium used for research purposes, a Japanese expert said.

Since a nuclear crisis broke out in Japan in March 2011, the United States has expressed its concern to the Japanese government over how it will use plutonium.

==Kyodo


Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com.